The Woods Shall Answer
by Tenar
Summary: A look at Zoe and Wash falling in love. Companion fic to 'What More Than Usual Light'.


A/N Thanks very much to my brilliant beta, Parenthetical.

This fic is a companion piece to my story 'What more than usual light?'. It's not essential to read the other fic first, but this one will make more sense if you do.

**The Woods Shall Answer**

The second he sticks his head under the flight console, Wash knows he wants to be on this ship. The other ships looking to take him on as pilot are all new, mostly Alliance issue and while they look shiny, he chafes at the efficient sterility of their works. He can see this beauty has a multitude of little tricks and secrets for any man willing to get under her skin and learn them, work to release her potential. He's got a powerful suspicion that the mechanic isn't half the genius this Captain Reynolds seems to think he is, but he doesn't seem like the type to complain about the pilot interfering with the works of the ship.

Wash comes out from among the wiring bubbling with excitement at the thought of flying this ship. The Captain looks pleased when he hears words of praise for his ship.

'So you'll take the job, then?'

Noticing the tall, gorgeous First Mate glaring at him, Wash belatedly remembers he ought to feign at least a little reluctance if he doesn't want to be taken for a total _dāi__ zi. _He prevaricates a bit, trying to give the impression he needs to be persuaded. He thinks about reminding them of all the other jobs he could be taking, but he knows this is the ship he wants. He's afraid that if he hesitates for too long the woman looking daggers at him will talk the Captain into withdrawing the offer. When the two return from their little chat he extends his hand.

'I'll take it, Captain Reynolds.'

The man's face lights up for a brief second.

'Name's Mal. This here's Zoe.'

His pleasure is at odds with the closed-off wariness that seems to be his normal expression. Wash wonders if it's as easy to get that look on Zoe's face. Somehow he doubts it, at least where he's concerned. Still, he may not be any kind of a soldier, but he's always up for a challenge.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Serenity flies like the dream he knew she would be. Sometimes he feels the ship's really alive, responsive and trusting under his steady hands. He knows it's a foolish idea, but he doesn't much care. It feels true to him, and anyway he's never been afraid of having foolish ideas. Foolish ideas, foolish stories… what's wrong with them anyway? Life's not worth a_ zhāng láng de bí kǒng _without a bit of laughter in it.

Wash could wish that the rest of the crew felt the same. Bester is personable enough, though Wash wishes he was a little less obsessed with his pecker – no need to be reminded about the lack of ladies when you're two weeks out into the black – but Mal and Zoe aren't exactly the chattiest pair Wash has ever met. They have a tendency to lapse into a guarded silence whenever there's nothing essential to say, which is most of the time by their lights. Eventually Wash realises where he's seen it before – among the few combatants who ended up in the camp he was in during the war. Once he puts this together with Mal's brown coat and the name of the ship, he figures it's no wonder these two are tough nuts to crack. Still, he keeps trying, and whenever it gets too much he just retreats to the bridge. The stars are always good company.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mal's sudden announcement that he's hired a new mechanic gives Wash a moment of panic – what if she doesn't take kindly to his messing with the ship's electrics? – but once he meets Kaylee his fears are dispelled. He's relieved and impressed when he saunters down to the engine room and finds she's not only happy with his modifications, but already thinking of ways to coax even more flying power out of the engine. He's even more impressed by the way that she manages to win smiles out of Mal and draw Zoe into confidences. With Kaylee around, Wash's silly stories take on new life, his delivery enhanced by the knowledge of a willing audience. Meals around the long table take on a more convivial air, Mal and Zoe joining in the laughter and even contributing some stories of their own.

Kaylee reminds Wash of his mei mei, who used to brighten up his family's dinner table just like this. Missing out on being with family, that's the only thing Wash doesn't like about flying. Some nights, sitting in the kitchen using his chopsticks as puppets and listening to the others laugh, he thinks maybe that won't be such a problem any more.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Once things start to relax, Wash finds he has a lot more company on the bridge. Kaylee comes up to check how her ship is flying and say hi to the dinosaurs he's ranged around the console. Mal stops confining his visits to Captain-y things and starts wandering up to pass the time of day or make a stab at flying his ship himself. Wash is talking him through a few of the finer points of manoeuvring when Zoe appears in the doorway.

'Should I be making peace with my maker, sir?' she says, her even tone belied by the way laughter is crinkling up the corners of her eyes.

'Insubordination in my crew now?' Mal responds, mock-stern and sounding like he's having more fun than Wash has ever seen him have.

Zoe rolls her eyes, but she's openly smiling now, directing her smile at both of them. Wash suddenly sees how much she cares for Mal, realises that she's been a long time hoping to see him happy. Now he's noticed, Wash can't help wishing like hell that she would turn a bit of that affection on him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tall, devastatingly beautiful soldiers aren't liable to lavish that much affection on short, 'interesting-looking' pilots, but after seeing Mal up there on the bridge Zoe starts to keep Wash company from time to time. She's got a genuine respect for his piloting skills, and turns out to have a wicked sense of humour. She starts ribbing him about his moustache every time she sees him, trying to persuade him to shave it off.

'It's an eyesore.'

Serenity's course is set and she's flying true without much need for a guiding hand, so Wash launches into full flow.

'My moustache, an eyesore? My dear lady, while I must respect the fact that you have an array of deadly combat skills with which to assert your esteemed opinions, you must recognise that my moustache is a thing of beauty! It is luxuriant, virile, an adornment of – '

The nav unit bleeps and Wash's attention instantly turns to his ship. He curses his love of grandiloquence, because before he can run a proper read a ship has loomed up through the cockpit window and he realises it must have shown up on the scans a while back, if only he'd been looking. Which would have been nice, because – well. Always nice to have a slight chance of avoiding a painful, drawn-out death. He blanches for a moment, contemplating this, and then he figures he'll at least go down flying.

Amazingly, they survive. When Zoe tells him he did a good job and smiles that astounding smile, Wash thinks maybe it was worth the heart-stopping terror.

Afterwards, he shaves the moustache off.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Things are a lot easier on the ship these days, but Wash still relishes the time he spends alone up on the bridge. Putting his lady to bed at night, making sure she'll fly true while they're all sleeping, he contemplates the stars which pulled him out into the black in the first place. Some pilots look at the stars and see only figures, points on a map that tell them where to go. Wash looks at them to see where he is, wrapped in four thousand years worth of stories. He likes thinking of the four guardians of the skies, and their younger sisters the Pleiades, set in the sky to guide the sailors of Earth-that-Was. He's thinking of those stars, shining above seas which no one will ever see again, when he becomes aware that Zoe has stepped up onto the bridge. Because it's a story too beautiful not to share, he tells her what he's thinking of.

'Didn't figure you as having a big interest in old stories.'

She's interested – he can feel her draw forward, the better to make sense of where he's pointing – and he keeps talking, hoping that his mouth won't carry him into trouble.

The next thing he knows, Zoe's leaning over him and they're locked in a kiss that births galaxies behind his eyes. If this is the kind of trouble his mouth can conjure, he ain't complaining. The Pleiades were the consorts of gods, but that doesn't fit Zoe. She's the goddess, powerful and protective _Xuán Wǔ_, turning Wash's mortal flesh to liquid.

'Bunk,' she says, and turns towards the door.

That's when Wash _knows_ he's died and gone to heaven.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Zoe's bunk is pretty bare, except for the weaponry hung up within reach of the bed. Normally this kind of bedroom adornment would make Wash a little jumpy, but when Zoe grabs his hand and pulls him forward into a kiss even more passionate than the one on the bridge he's too busy trying not to melt into a puddle on the floor to worry about potentially lethal décor. He's torn between keeping the kissing going and looking at her, because _sweet mothers of god_ she's beautiful. His hands solve the problem for him, because they seem to have gone on – huh – autopilot and are engaged in giving him more to look at. Her skin is silk and water and when he takes her breast in his mouth she cries out and grinds against him. Then her hands are pulling at his pants and _lao tian _he's never felt anything like this, air cool against his cock and his hand wet and burning between her legs.

Wash suddenly realises that there's no turning back from this; that if he's lucky enough to be with this goddess then he'll have to have her for good or get off the ship altogether. He pulls away and tries to tell her, but his usual loquacity has deserted him. He gets a few words out and sees Zoe's face change, take on that closed and angry look she wore in the first weeks he was on Serenity. In his effort to explain, Wash starts babbling, and then words are driven out of his head altogether because _blazing Feng-huang_,did she just propose?

For a moment all Wash can do is nod. He feels her quivering under his hands, trusting to his touch the same way the ship does, and flying's the thing he does best. She arches under him as he leans forward, and then he's inside her, overwhelmed with the ecstasy of it and holding still for one long moment. Zoe bucks her hips against him and they're moving and soaring until she's crying out, body tensing and surging around him. He holds himself back one final moment, kissing her neck and breathing in her fragrance, until he has to move again, pushing into her wetness until he can't think of anything but how amazing it feels. His whole body is liquid and he's left grinning and breathless, face buried in her hair.

Holding Zoe close afterwards, curled in the narrow bunk as if they'd never been anywhere else, Wash plans how he'll show her the stars.

dāi zi – fool, sucker

zhāng láng de bí kǒng – cockroach's nostril

Xuán Wǔ – black tortoise / black warrior. The black tortoise is one of the four major Chinese constellations, who also represent deities. It is usually represented as a tortoise or a snake and translated into English as 'black tortoise', but Xuán Wǔ literally means 'black warrior'. It is associated with strength and stability, because of the thick shell of the tortoise, which seems appropriate for Zoe.

lao tian - good god

Feng-huang – the phoenix, another of the four Chinese constellations. The phoenix is also the symbol associated with brides, so it has double significance for Wash.

The title is a paraphrase of a line from Edmund Spenser's _Epithalamion:_

Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound;

Ne let the same of any be envide:

So Orpheus did for his owne bride!

So I unto my selfe alone will sing;

The woods shall to me answer, and my Eccho ring.


End file.
